COURSE DESCRIPTION
WHat you will learn
About this Specialization
In this specialization you will learn how to drive change in cities and communities towards sustainable, climate friendly, just, healthy and prosperous futures, and you will boost your career with new knowledge, understanding and skills for navigating urban transformations. This specialisation brings together a series of cutting-edge courses with world-leading teachers on cities, communities, sustainability, governance and innovation.
This specialization is offered by the IIIEE at Lund University and the City Futures Academy – an online learning community on urban transformations. Our flagship course, Greening the Economy: Sustainable Cities, is ranked in the Best Online Courses of All Time by Class Central. The ranking by Class Central contains 250 courses from 100 universities based on 170,000 reviews. Our specialisation builds on the success of the Greening the Economy: Sustainable Cities course.
A key approach embedded in the courses in this specialisation is the role of experimentation in urban transformations. In particular, urban living labs are highlighted as a means for catalysing change in cities and communities towards sustainable, climate friendly, just, healthy and prosperous futures. The experimentation within urban living labs offers the potential for accelerating transformations and systematic learning across urban and national contexts.
Applied Learning Project
Learners are introduced to key facts and insights about sustainable cities and communities as engines for greening the economy, then tasked with developing this understanding through readings and practice exercises that highlight the role of urban living labs in creating sustainable cities and communities. Specifically, you will learn: how to work with greening the economy through cities and communities; how to design and implement urban living labs for accelerating change in cities and communities; how to build resilience and create a host of benefits from nature-based solutions in cities and communities; and how to influence consumption patterns in cities and communities through sharing practices . Further documentaries and quizzes will provide you with critical thinking and a broader and deeper perspective that are essential to understanding and creating sustainable cities and communities.
The aim of this course is to give students insight about certification and about what it means to certify/self-assess safety- critical systems with focus on software system and to create a safety case, including a multi-concern perspective when needed and reuse opportunities, when appropriate.
The course is part of the programme MAISTR (hh.se/maistr) where participants can take the entire programme or individual courses. The course is for professionals and is held online in English. Application is open as long as there is a possibility of admission. The courses qualify for credits and are free of charge for participants who are citizens of any EU or EEA country, or Switzerland, or are permanent residents in Sweden. More information can be found at antagning.se. About the course Smart Healthcare with Applications, 4 credits Who is this course for?The course suits you with any Bachelor’s degree (equivalent of 180 Swedish credit points / ECTS credits at an accredited university) who have an interest in applying Artificial Intelligence (specifically Machine Learning) to healthcare. Leadership/management experience in health-related organization/industry OR a Bachelor degree in computer science is advantageous. What will you learn from this course?Healthcare as a sector together with other health-related sources of data (municipalities, home sensors, etc.), is now in a place and can take advantage of what data science, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML) have to offer. Information-driven care has the potential to build smart solutions based on the collected health data in order to achieve a holistic fact-based picture of healthcare, from an individual to system perspective. This course aims to provide a general introduction to information-driven care, challenges, applications, and opportunities. Students will get introduced to artificial intelligence and machine learning in specific, as well as some use cases of information-driven care, and gain practice on how a real-world evidence project within information-driven care is investigated. What is the format for this course?Instruction type: The lectures, announcements, and assignments of this course will be fully online via a learning management system and presented in English. Each lecture is delivered through a video conference tool with a set of presentation slides displayed online during each class session. Online practical labs (pre-written Python notebooks) are also provided in the lectures.
The course is broken down into: Basic Bayesian concepts Selecting priors, deriving some equations Bayesian inference, Parametric model estimation Sampling based methods Sequential inference (Kalman filters, particle filters) Approximate inference, variational inference Model selection (missing data) Bayesian deep neural networks
The course is part of the programme MAISTR (hh.se/maistr) where participants can take the entire programme or individual courses. The course is for professionals and is held online in English. Application is open as long as there is a possibility of admission. The courses qualify for credits and are free of charge for participants who are citizens of any EU or EEA country, or Switzerland, or are permanent residents in Sweden. More information can be found at antagning.se. About the course Critical design and practical ethics for AI, 3 credits Who is this course for? Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being increasingly implemented and used in society today. It has already proven to have an impact on the individual, organization and society, and this impact will most likely only increase. Therefore, it is important to understand the ethical issues that may arise from use of AI, as well as to adopt a critical stance to the technology’s impact. The course introduces critical and ethical issues surrounding data and society, to train the student to problematize and reason about artificial intelligence (AI). You are most likely a designer, innovator, or product manager that works with digital services and products. What will you learn from this course? The course deals with different perspectives on AI and its real and potential effect on organizations and society. The course is based on five different perspectives on AI: accountability, surveillance capitalism, power and bias, sustainability, and trust. The course material consists of recent and relevant literature on the impact of, and critical perspectives on AI. Active discussions founded in different ethical perspectives are also an important part of the course. What is the format of this course? This course is primarily self-paced, with a few synchronous meetings. Most activities are based on the student’s having consumed specified material beforehand, such as video lectures, podcasts, articles, and books. Active discussions, both in online forums and during synchronous meetings, are an important part of the course.
This course looks at where important materials in products we use every day come from and how these materials can be used more efficiently, longer, and in closed loops. This is the aim of the Circular Economy, but it doesn’t happen on its own. It is the result of choices and strategies by suppliers, designers, businesses, policymakers and all of us as consumers. In addition to providing many cases of managing materials for sustainability, the course also teaches skills and tools for analyzing circular business models and promotes development of your own ideas to become more involved in the transition to a Circular Economy. You will learn from expert researchers and practitioners from around Europe as they explain core elements and challenges in the transition to a circular economy over the course of 5 modules: Module 1: Materials. This module explores where materials come from, and builds a rationale for why society needs more circularity. Module 2: Circular Business Models. In this module circular business models are explored in-depth and a range of ways for business to create economic and social value are discussed. Module 3: Circular Design, Innovation and Assessment. This module presents topics like functional materials and eco-design as well as methods to assess environmental impacts. Module 4: Policies and Networks. This module explores the role of governments and networks and how policies and sharing best practices can enable the circular economy. Module 5: Circular Societies. This module examines new norms, forms of engagement, social systems, and institutions, needed by the circular economy and how we, as individuals, can help society become more circular.
In this course, participants are introduced to key notions and concepts evolving in sustainability science that are relevant to all, independent to one's work or field of interest. After having completed the course, participants will have a better understanding of the vocabulary used today and should demonstrate the ability to reflect critically to integrate different perspectives of environmental, social, and economic sustainability to their specific area of interest or research. Throughout the course, links are made to the Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, as our current global road map towards sustainability, and how new approaches and solutions are emerging to describe, understand and address key sustainability challenges. Put simply, the overall aim is to give participants the knowledge and confidence needed to present and discuss ideas with others by applying methods, concepts and the vocabulary exemplified in the course with a more holistic view on the sustainability agenda across topics and disciplines. The course is designed as 5 modules: The first module presents essential concepts within sustainability science, and methods used to describe, frame, and communicate aspects of sustainability. We look at key questions such as what we mean with strong or weak sustainability, resilience, tipping points and the notion of planetary boundaries. We also look at some techniques used of envisioning alternative futures and transitions pathways. The second module is all about systems thinking and how systemic approaches are applied today to achieve long-term sustainability goals. Your will see what we mean with systems thinking and how systems thinking, and design is applied in practice to find new solutions. The third module touches upon drivers for a sustainable future, namely links to economy and business with an introduction to notions of a circular economy, and also policy and regulatory frameworks. We introduce the basics of transformative policy frames and how they are designed and applied through several real-case examples. The fourth module discusses the links between innovation and sustainability, highlighting approaches for technological, social, institutional, and financial innovations. Some examples (or cases) aim to show how different actors across society balance in practice the need for innovative approaches for social, environmental, and economic sustainability. The fifth and last module provides general insights on how we work with models to create various scenarios that help us identify solutions and pathways for a more sustainable world. Three main dimensions are addressed namely climate and climate change, nature and biodiversity, and the importance of data and geodata science to support spatial planning and sustainable land use.